Six foreign entities have funneled more than $2.65 billion into American politics through nonprofit organizations, according to a report by Americans for Public Trust released ahead of a House Ways & Means Committee hearing on foreign influence in U.S. nonprofits.
The hearing, titled "Foreign Influence in American Non-profits: Unmasking Threats from Beijing and Beyond," examined how overseas money flows into the American political system through 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations — vehicles that allow foreign donors to shape domestic policy debates while skirting laws that prohibit foreign nationals from donating directly to political campaigns.
According to Fox News, APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland testified at the hearing. The group's report laid out the scope of the problem in plain terms:
"For years, foreign organizations and megadonors have quietly poured billions of dollars into the U.S. political sphere with little to no accountability."
And the $2.65 billion is likely just what's visible. The report warns there is "undoubtedly even more overseas funding sources backing and influencing U.S. advocacy efforts."
The report identifies a network of foreign billionaires and family dynasties whose philanthropy doubles as political infrastructure. The money flows through foundations based overseas, lands in American nonprofits, and ends up shaping everything from environmental policy to election law.
Here are the six entities and their reported U.S. footprint, according to APT:
Add it up, and you're looking at a vast, largely invisible pipeline of foreign capital directed at American governance.
The report reserves particular scrutiny for Hansjörg Wyss, whose network emerges as the most politically aggressive of the six. APT traced his money to a roster of prominent left-wing organizations:
"Wyss' foreign money has found its way to prominent left-wing organizations including Fund for a Better Future, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Redistricting Action Fund, Planned Parenthood, and Indivisible."
That's not charity. That's a political portfolio — redistricting, voter mobilization, campaign attack ads, environmental regulation — funded by a Swiss national and routed through the American nonprofit system. The report describes the operation bluntly:
"The groups funded by Wyss utilize their immense resources to advance a progressive agenda, mold policy debates and decisions, and influence American elections. His foreign funding network focuses on policy priorities such as radical environmentalism, championing sweeping changes to election laws, and directly engaging in campaign activities, including voter mobilization efforts and political attack ads."
A spokesperson for the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund pushed back, claiming they have "always followed relevant rules, laws and disclosure requirements, and have prohibited its grants from being used to support or oppose political candidates or parties."
Which is precisely the point. The rules are the problem. When the legal framework allows a foreign billionaire to pour hundreds of millions into organizations that engage in voter mobilization and political attack ads — and the only defense needed is that the grants technically weren't earmarked for a specific candidate — the system isn't working. It's being worked.
American law prohibits foreign nationals from donating directly to political campaigns. That prohibition exists for an obvious reason: American elections should be decided by Americans. But the nonprofit system has become a bypass valve so large it renders the original prohibition almost decorative.
The APT report captures the structural failure:
"Foreign donors can currently fund U.S.-based advocacy groups – most often 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s – virtually unchecked."
And the reach extends well beyond elections. The report concludes that "foreign funding has infiltrated nearly every sector of the U.S. political sphere." Environmental policy. Financial regulation. Election law. Redistricting. The money doesn't need to go directly to a candidate when it can shape the entire landscape that candidates operate in.
Consider what $25 million for "the acceleration of electric vehicles" actually buys. It doesn't buy cars. It buys the advocacy infrastructure — the studies, the lobbying, the public campaigns — that pressures American policymakers into mandates and subsidies that reshape the U.S. auto industry. Foreign money is setting American industrial policy, laundered through a climate foundation.
Or consider $6 million earmarked for "financial regulation efforts aimed at mitigating climate change risks." That's foreign capital funding domestic pressure campaigns to force American banks and insurers to adopt climate-based lending standards. Foreign billionaires are using American nonprofits to regulate American finance.
The Arabella network surfaces repeatedly in the report. The Oak Foundation alone directed nearly $82 million to Arabella-managed funds — the New Venture Fund, the Windward Fund, and the Hopewell Fund. CIFF added another $10 million to Arabella-managed nonprofits.
Arabella Advisors manages a constellation of nonprofit entities that function as a pass-through system. Money goes in under one name, comes out under another, and the original donor's fingerprints disappear. It is, in effect, a dark money clearinghouse — the very thing progressives claim to oppose when the money comes from the right.
The left spent years railing against "dark money in politics." Citizens United became a progressive rallying cry. Demands for donor transparency were a staple of every Democratic campaign platform. Yet here sits a multi-billion-dollar foreign influence apparatus flowing through the exact kind of opaque nonprofit structures that progressives claimed threatened democracy — and the silence is deafening.
Foreign dark money is apparently only a threat when it's hypothetical and conservative. When it's real, documented, and progressive, it's philanthropy.
The House Ways & Means Committee hearing signals that congressional Republicans are treating this as more than a report to file and forget. The committee's jurisdiction over tax-exempt organizations gives it the tools to examine whether the nonprofit framework needs structural reform — not just disclosure tweaks, but a fundamental rethinking of how foreign money enters the American advocacy ecosystem.
The scale demands it. $2.65 billion from just six entities. A grant database that vanishes. A CCP-linked coalition connected to the leadership of a foundation pouring hundreds of millions into American groups. Foreign billionaires are funding voter mobilization and political attack ads through organizations that claim they don't engage in politics.
Americans have every right to debate their own environmental policy, their own election laws, and their own financial regulations. What they shouldn't have to do is compete with billions of dollars from Swiss, British, Danish, and German-Dutch interests who decided American democracy was too important to leave to Americans.